


soul into the soul may flow

by celestialskiff, yourtinseltinkerbell



Series: the ecstasy: a Magicians daemon au [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - No Beast (The Magicians), Angst, Brakebills (The Magicians), Brakebills is canonically awful, Complicated Emotions, Daemons, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Graphic Format: GIF, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourtinseltinkerbell/pseuds/yourtinseltinkerbell
Summary: The first step will be the hardest, Kady told herself.She was wrong, of course. When she took the first step, she didn’t really believe she was doing this. Neither did Segulah. She was simply stepping out into the snow: she wasn’t going to leave her daemon behind, because that would be crazy.Julia and Kady go through with the ritual that separates Magicians and their daemons. But it has consequences neither of them have imagined.
Relationships: Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker
Series: the ecstasy: a Magicians daemon au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984829
Comments: 18
Kudos: 32





	soul into the soul may flow

**Author's Note:**

> Title: from John Donne’s : from John Donne’s [The Ecstasy](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44099/the-ecstasy)
> 
> Text: celestialskiff  
> Art: yourtinseltinkerbell 
> 
> Note: This fic was written in collaboration with yourtinseltinkerbell. She came up with the details of this AU, including the daemons and their names. While the prose is mine, the ideas are all hers. It wouldn’t have been written without her.  
> Thanks to capeofstorm for handholding.

Segulah noticed Julia before Kady did. A spotted hyena, Segulah had the stare of a predator and the wide-jawed grin of a canine. Aster, Julia’s daemon, was a peregrine falcon, and he stared back at Segulah exactly the way she stared at him: with chilling calculation. He would, Segulah said, be completely uncompromising. He’d do anything. 

Kady and Segulah liked that. 

“You think she’s powerful?” Kady asked her daemon. 

Segulah stretched out in the long grass. She didn’t say anything. Kady took that as a yes, and she was surprised when she learnt that Julia hadn’t known about magic until she arrived at Brakebills, because there _was_ something powerful about her. Magic seemed to know exactly what she wanted, and wanted to give it to her. 

Kady sat in the back of the classrooms beside a laconic boy called Penny, but she couldn’t get her mind off Julia, who sat, tiny and straight-backed at the very front of the room, beside a boy with a golden retriever daemon and a perplexed expression. 

Over the next week, she shared joints with Penny, and Segulah did her best not to intimidate his rat-daemon, while Kady’s eyes flickered to the sky, looking for the black silhouette of the falcon. 

Julia and Kady knew one another’s names, but didn’t really talk until Professor Perlman told them to practice a Popper’s exercise together. Kady had noticed that Julia was the quickest or second quickest at picking up new tuts: spells formed easily in her fingers. They finished their assignment with a lot of time to spare, and Julia turned the page to the next section of the textbook. 

“Want to try this one?” Her smile was impish; her focus absolute. Kady grinned despite herself. 

The spell produced a white-hot orb of power between their hands. This wasn’t the intended result: it was supposed to condense water from the atmosphere. Julia met Kady’s eyes, biting her lip, and her daemon settled on her shoulder, raising his wings in what looked like a shrug. 

Kady thought she could close the power down, or at least redirect it, and she shut her eyes, imagining it turning into a white mist or a tiny pulse of electricity that couldn’t hurt anyone. She opened her hands into a familiar tut. But, instead, there was a very loud thunderclap. She blinked: the desk was singed black. 

“What did you think you were doing?” Perlman hissed, as her tern daemon landed on the edge of their desk, clicking his beak. 

“Practising,” Julia said, and showed Perlman a series of calculations she’d been working on. This diffused the situation far better than Kady’s attempt to discharge the spell: Perlman bent over the paper, clicking her tongue thoughtfully in rhythm with her daemon. 

When the class was over, Julia met Kady in the corridor. “You have ash on your cheek,” she said, and her face crinkled into a laugh. 

Segulah laughed too, the rattling cackle of a hyena, which usually sent people running. But Julia continued to smile, and Kady joined in with Segulah: _OK, maybe it was kind of funny._

“Want to get a drink?” Julia asked her. 

In fact, Kady had planned to ask Julia for a drink: but in a couple of weeks, when she’d figured out exactly what she wanted from her, and how to handle the situation. Now she could only nod, and let Julia lead her to the Physical Kid’s Cottage, where there was always alcohol, and usually stuff for Kady to lift, too. 

Julia’s little friend with the dog daemon waved to them, and Julia helped herself to two glasses of bourbon, which she brought back outside without asking Kady’s opinion. A man – Kady thought his name was Eliot – and his horse daemon passed by, and Julia waved to them. She seemed to fit in here, to make herself part of the group, in a way Kady never knew how to do. 

Kady took the glass Julia offered her, and they sat in the shade of one of the trees. 

“You’ve been watching me.” Julia gathered her hair behind her head, winding it into a bun, before letting it go again. 

Kady sipped her drink. She felt more and more nonplussed, and she didn’t like it. 

“It’s OK,” Julia said. “I just wondered why.” 

“You’re powerful,” Segulah said, shoving her huge head between Kady and Julia. “And we like your daemon.” 

Julia’s daemon remained where he was for a moment: a dark shape in the tree just above their heads. He seemed to be able to travel further from Julia than most people’s daemons could. Then his wings flickered and he glided down to land silently on Julia’s knee. He looked at Segulah. “My name is Aster,” he said. 

When their two daemons began to speak to one another, Kady and Julia relaxed in turn. They didn’t listen to exactly what their daemons were saying, but the communication between their daemons eased their own conversation. Knowing their daemons liked each other made them like each other too. 

“You have a lot of power for such a novice,” Kady told her. 

Julia wrinkled her nose. “Novice?” 

“You didn’t know about magic until you got here. Some of us did.” 

Julia was full of questions about that: Kady could see her trying to restrain herself, and sipping her drink instead of immediately asking. At last, she said, “That must have been an interesting way to grow up.” 

Kady shrugged. Now that she had an advantage, she didn’t want to lose it. “And I was interested in you because you seem like trouble.” 

Julia laughed. “Are you flirting with me?” 

“No.” She definitely was. 

“I’m supposed to say I’m not trouble, in which case you’ll get me drunk; or that I am trouble, in which case you’ll get me drunk.” 

“You’re the one who gave me this liquor,” Kady pointed out, sipping the last of her bourbon. She was more relaxed than she’d been in days: the sky was blue, the alcohol warmed her throat, she was talking to Julia. And yesterday she’d given Marina enough swag to satisfy her for a few weeks. 

Segulah stretched her front paws, and rolled over, warming her belly in the sunshine. 

They ended up in Julia’s bed together approximately two hours after that, so Kady’s flirting paid off. But she wasn’t sure that she’d actually _done_ anything other than enthusiastically go along with whatever Julia said. Julia made her feel like she was making decisions, while actually making all the decisions herself. 

In bed, she slid under Kady’s body like she was dying to be there, and kissed her – carefully, tenderly, and then frantically. Kady held her down, tugging Julia’s lip between her teeth – and felt as though she’d been lured into exactly this position, that Julia had wanted her to feel exactly like this: joyful and needy and a little bit wild. 

Kady liked it. She liked all of it. 

Until, afterwards, Julia said, “We should probably just be friends.” 

Kady shrugged, and passed her a cigarette. “I didn’t think this was long-term.” 

When they were in their own room, Segulah said, “That’s a terrible idea, and we hate it. Why did you let it happen?” 

Kady scratched the base of Segulah’s ears the way she liked. “It’s just how things are.” 

**

_The first step will be the hardest_ , Kady told herself. 

She was wrong, of course. When she took the first step, she didn’t really believe she was doing this. Neither did Segulah. She was simply stepping out into the snow: she wasn’t going to leave her daemon behind, because that would be crazy. 

It didn’t take long for the pain to begin. Myakovsky had made them do exercises to prepare for this moment, but they were nothing like this. Pain started in her stomach and flowed up and through her whole self. She wanted to howl with grief. For a moment, she wasn’t her adult self any longer: she was the Kady who waited in the car for her mother to return for her, as the sky grew darker and darker, and she got colder, and she became less and less sure that anyone would come for her. She was very small, and she was being betrayed by the person she needed to care for her. 

Except this time, she was the betrayer. 

_Don’t look back. Don’t look, just walk, just keeping walking_. But the urge to look was unbearable, and she turned her head. Segulah stood out vividly against the snow, her mane ruffled by the wind. She hated it here. She was so cold. Her eyes met Kady’s, and Kady was horrified by herself. She was walking away from her heart, her self, her _soul._

Suddenly Segulah couldn’t stand it: she tried to run towards her. She couldn’t cross the invisible boundary. She scrabbled on the ice, and her paws lost their purchase. Kady saw her slump forward in pain: she heard the harsh yowl of her cry. 

Kady didn’t want to keep walking: her feet floundered in the snow, and she staggered. Julia gripped her wrist. She could make out the mutton-fat smeared on Julia’s face and neck and the greenish glow of Julia’s magic, keeping her warm. Julia didn’t speak: her face was pinched with pain.

 _I want to go home,_ Kady thought, like a child. _I want to go home!_

Home. When had she last had a home? She wanted sunshine, a park somewhere in the city, a joint in her hand, and Segulah lying belly-up, warming her fur. 

The wind blew into her face, and though the spell and the mutton-fat protected her, she was still so chilled that it was hard to breathe. They walked in Antarctic twilight: a blue that never became day. The stars were more brilliant than she had ever imagined they could be, and the snow held and carried that light, like glass holds a note of music. It could be beautiful, but the light needled her skin, and her throat burned. 

She’d talked to Segulah about this. They’d agreed: real Magicians could separate from their daemons. Real Magicians travelled to one of these strange places at the edges of the world, where magic was potent and daemons couldn’t travel, and both human and daemon learnt to walk alone. Kady was a real Magician. Kady’s power ran deep and strong, and more than that: she was brave. She was determined. She could bear almost anything. Segulah agreed. Segulah understood. 

But Kady hadn’t known how it would feel. 

This was a severance. This was a betrayal, not just to Segulah, but to a fundamental part of herself. After this, she would never be whole. It was too cold to cry, but her body trembled with grief. Julia’s gloved hand gripped hers again, and this time Kady held on. Being touched by another human could not ease the ache in her chest, but still she clung to Julia, as scared children might reach for one another in the dark. 

They walked. 

The pain grew greater, and more bitter. Kady’s knees gave way; Julia fell. Someone was crawling back towards their daemon, on their belly in the deep snow. Kady looked away before she could see the reunion. Another step, another. 

She felt a rending: something was torn from her. She retched bile, and fell, fingers sliding through snow. She wanted to die: she should die out here: this was no place for human life. And then – 

Then she felt it. Magic. Magic, the raw tangled symphony of magic, whispering against the part of her senses that usually felt her daemon. 

“Oh,” she breathed. “Fuck.” 

Julia was kneeling in the snow, arms spread. The magic keeping her warm rippled over her skin. Her mouth was open: she seemed to be breathing in light. 

Their eyes met. There was no need to speak. They could see in one another’s faces that they were feeling the same thing. 

Kady helped her to stand up. They kept walking. 

The sky grew darker, and the air tasted unlike anything Kady had known before. Like metal, or ozone: very thin, and very bitter, as though they were at the top of a high mountain, though all around she could see nothing but snow bleeding into sky. 

As she walked, Kady felt she was touching a myriad of worlds, like she was at the centre of a piano, and each string led to another reality. She could brush them with her fingertips as they spread out all around her. Each string led to another string, and it was limitless. 

Her feet were unsteady. Her heart ached. Segulah had watched her, and watched her, as though all she wanted was to stare after Kady forever. As though she could not believe that Kady was doing this – 

And Kady heard a snatch of music, a high clear silvery sound, coming from both very far away and directly over her left shoulder. She smelt pollen, and a rain-wet breeze, and heard the rattle of a train, and a hawk’s cry. She felt like a ghost, walking through a world of ghosts – 

Or she was losing her mind because her heart had been torn from her chest. 

**

She would never know how long it took to cross that strange gulf of snow. Julia was with her most of the way: sometimes Kady lost sight of her, and then they would be holding hands once more, as though they had never been apart. 

Until she reached the other side, she still believed she would find Segulah again. She believed everything would be all right. 

But at the edge, there was only Myakovsky, and a portal out of the Antarctic. And Segulah wasn’t there. Kady had been truly severed. 

Beside her, Julia keened with pain. 

** 

The portal brought them back to Brakebills. Kady staggered out into the trees, the sunshine. Immediately, she was nauseous. The snow was easier to bear than this. She couldn’t be here. 

A few of the teachers met them. They were told classes were optional. Sunderland suggested they get checked over in the medical centre, but she didn’t say it was obligatory. She simply looked at the collection of thin, dirty, confused students, and said, “You’re still on the journey you began when you stepped away from your daemons.” 

She offered no comfort. 

Kady’s chest hurt. She reached for Segulah, looking for the warm bulk of her head under her palm, but she wasn’t there. Julia, beside her, swayed on her feet. 

Julia had always looked waif-like, but the Antarctic left her ravaged: chunks of her hair had fallen out, her eyes and eyelids were red and swollen from the snow-glare, she walked dizzily, head tilted on one side. Kady waited for Segulah to say something to Aster. Segulah and Aster communicated easily, and usually Segulah instructed Aster to take care of Julia. 

Both of them stood there, waiting for words to come. 

“You need a shower,” Julia said. 

“You need to eat something,” Kady replied. “Me too.” 

They looked back at Brakebills, and at the rest of the class. Someone tried to make a joke. There was no sound. Penny met her eyes briefly, looked away, and travelled out of the grounds, melting away like he’d never been there. Helpful. 

“I can’t stay here,” Julia said. 

“Me neither.” 

**

They went, first, to Julia’s loft in Brooklyn, because of course Julia had a loft in Brooklyn. Kady had been there once before, midway through last semester, when she, Julia, Penny and Quentin had decided they couldn’t stand one more moment in Brakebills. 

After she showered, Kady sat on Julia’s low couch and remembered being here before. Penny’s daemon, a glossy rat called Ardhvika, had been flirting with Segulah, and Segulah had been enjoying it, even letting Ardhvika groom her ears. Quentin and Julia had smoked weed: Quentin had fallen asleep in a bean-bag chair. His daemon snored while Aster had talked to them all about how he was named after stars and made out of stars as Julia spelled the window different shades of blue. 

It hadn’t been a bad night. 

Kady sat in the same place, trying to tug the worst mats out of her hair, missing Segulah’s head in her lap. She missed how, when she was sad, Segulah would raise her eyebrows at Kady, and her jaw unhinged as she laughed her wonderful hyena laugh. 

Julia found the remains of a bottle of whiskey in one of the kitchen cabinets, and they drank it before eating anything. It made Kady light-headed, and Julia could barely walk. She tried to stand up and fell over, and sat on the floor with tears running down her face. 

“I’m going to kill someone,” she said, through her tears. “I’m going to fucking kill someone.” 

“We should try a spell to locate our daemons,” Kady said. “Then, yeah. That sounds like a good idea.” 

They tried a spell: nothing. No sign of their daemons: although magic pulsed swiftly through their blood, the spell didn’t go anywhere. It was also hard to get their circumstances right without a daemon to anchor them. Kady hit her head in frustration. 

They tried another, more complex spell: nothing. 

“We’re too worn out,” Kady said. “Let’s get some food.” 

It was four in the afternoon. Time hadn’t had any meaning for weeks, and Kady found the changing light baffling, the idea of mealtimes and commuters and traffic lights. There were hisses of shock and dismay in the first restaurant they entered, and Kady realised that she didn’t just find herself abhorrent: without a daemon, she was terrifying to other people too. 

Julia looked ready to start a fight about it, but Kady was too depressed to back her up, so they bought frozen pizza, cookies, coffee and fruit at the nearest grocery store instead. Kady saw a carton of milk and felt a desperate, primal longing, even she usually hated milk. She stood outside, daemonless, terrifying, glugging it down. 

It was at that moment, with the cold milk pouring down her throat, that she realised how depleted she’d been by the Arctic. At the same time, she felt powerful: she was willing to fuck anyone up. She didn’t care any more. They walked back to the loft, hearing the whispered horror of strangers all around them. 

After her second mouthful of pizza, Julia said, “I’m going to throw up.” 

“Try not to,” Kady said, but helped Julia to run to the sink. 

They could only eat tiny bites of cookies, and a few grapes. Their stomachs had shrunk from days without enough food. Their legs were weak. Julia’s hair was coming out. 

They tried another spell to locate their daemons. 

Another. Another. 

Kady could feel the magic all around, more potently than she ever had before. She tried other spells, to check she could do them: they were all easy, falling into place almost before she finished the tut. 

“If we could just locate them with magic, we would have,” Julia said. “It was never going to be easy.” 

Her voice cracked. They sat on the floor in the sigil they’d drawn. Exhausted. Hopeless. 

Kady was desperate to sleep, but as she began to drop off, she reached for Segulah’s warmth, her soft fur, and startled awake, frantic. In the end, she and Julia lay together on Julia’s old bed, holding onto each other’s wrists. Hours passed. 

** 

Kady wasn’t scared of Marina any more. She hadn’t really been scared of Marina since she told her own secrets to Penny at the trials: that she had lied for Marina and that she had been a thief for her. Once she’d spoken it aloud, Marina seemed to get smaller. In the Antarctic she’d begun to understand how powerful she herself was. Fuck Marina. 

Magicians didn’t normally travel without their daemons, even if they could. Marina was one of the exceptions. Kady remembered the first time she’d seen her without her daemon, the cold sickness she’d felt at the wrongness of it. Kady had never known of any other Hedges who could move around without their daemon: it made Marina more intimidating than she was already. 

Now – If Marina was frightening, then what was Kady?

“I’ll square things off with Marina and Mom,” she told Julia. “Then we’re gone.” 

They’d both been overcome with an itchiness – a need to travel. They weren’t even recovered enough to eat real food, but waiting miserably in Julia’s studio was impossible. 

“Do you want me to help?” Julia asked. 

But Kady didn’t need her for this. She was blazing with rage as she made her way to Marina’s safe-house: as she blasted through the wards she realised how pathetic they were. How easy to brush aside. 

Marina’s daemon was with her this time, and the sight of the ermine perched on her shoulder made Kady’s stomach turn over. Seeing him gave Kady hope that Segulah _would_ return to her, and that made the pain of being without her even more acute. 

“I didn’t think you’d get this far, honestly,” Marina said. 

“Your wards are shit.” 

Marina raised her eyebrows. “Not what I meant. I thought you’d flunk out of Brakebills before now. You made it across the wasteland, then. Did you hear the singing?” 

Kady saw Marina’s cronies reacting to that. They were hungry for Marina’s secrets, and the words ‘wasteland’ and ‘singing’, without context, whet their appetites. She was suddenly aware of how much Marina manipulated them and how easy it would be to undermine her. 

Kady folded her arms. 

“I know how it feels,” Marina said. “The ache. You’re feeling pretty mad right now, aren’t you? Raw. I can smell the power on you.” 

“Are you scared?” Kady asked. 

Marina laughed. “What do you need? Are you looking for advice?” 

“No. Do you want to do this in private, or do you want me to embarrass you in front of your lap dogs?” 

“There’s nothing they can’t hear,” Marina said. “But if you need a private conversation, that can be arranged.”

At a gesture from Marina, the other Hedges cleared out. Kady’s chest ached: she could feel magic boiling inside her. Power she’d learnt to control when she’d first meditated and begun to study battle magic now felt hot and tender, as though it might burst out of her at any moment. She was unskinned: Marina’s wards licked at her senses, and, all around them, the raw current of magic pulsed against her bones. 

Marina’s ermine daemon surged off her shoulder and onto the magic-scarred table. He fixed Kady with black eyes. “You want us to leave you alone.” 

“Obviously.” Kady’s jaw clenched. “You don’t have power over me now: I can protect myself and my mother. I can fuck you up. You know I can. You should be scared of me.” 

Marina snorted. “Don’t push it, Kady. I can work with leaving your mother and you alone.” 

Kady’s muscles ached. She wanted to threaten, to fight, to hit. She wanted to pit herself against Marina, and _hurt_ her. Fuck her, and her contempt, her superiority. “Why?” she asked. 

Marina drummed her fingers on the table. “Drink?” 

“No.” 

As Marina poured herself a shot of tequila, the ermine fixed Kady with another look. His voice was deeper than seemed possible from such a small creature. “Frankly, we didn’t think you’d be of any more use to us, not after this. We knew you’d either go crazy or get too strong for us to threaten you.” 

“Which am I?” 

“We don’t know yet,” Marina answered, downing the shot. “Do you want some advice?” 

“No,” Kady said, again. 

Marina snorted. Her daemon spoke, “Don’t limit your search to this world only.” 

**

“Vague bullshit,” Julia said when Kady told her about it. “Could mean anything.” She was a little drunk: she hadn’t been sober since they got to New York. 

Kady said, “Sounds like the kind of bullshit you’d like to look up in the library.” 

“Are you sure she wasn’t just fucking with you?” 

“Her daemon said it.” Kady sat on the couch, taking the cigarette from Julia’s hand. 

“Daemons can lie, too,” Julia said. 

**

Daemons could lie, but most of the time they didn’t. Two weeks later, Kady and Julia walked across a rock slip in rural Arizona and into another world. Kady knew almost at once that they were in the right place: the air here was thin. It had the brittle, metallic, ozone taste Kady had experienced in the Antarctic, and she heard a tumult of unconnected noise. 

For a moment she couldn’t see anything: it was like looking at sunlight on water. She gripped Julia’s wrist, eyes shut. Gradually, the sounds turned into the whirr of insects and the hush of water. 

She opened her eyes: the rocks were gone. The Arizona sun was gone. They stood on a beach at the dead of night. 

Kady didn’t let go of Julia. They stared up at a sky brilliant with stars, unable to speak. Then Julia laughed, throwing her head back. “Kady, what the fuck? What the fuck?” 

“I didn’t think it would work, either,” Kady said. “I can’t believe those Hedge hippies actually knew what they were talking about.” 

Still holding Kady’s hand, Julia spun in circles. Little flurries of thin sand rose around their feet. “This was worth way more than fifty dollars and that fermentation spell.” 

“Hey, that spell makes perfect kombucha every time.” Kady placed her hands on Julia’s hips, stilling her. She left them there: the sharp edges of Julia’s hip-bones fitting into her palms. Julia’s neck and the planes of her chest were white in the starlight. 

She was still laughing, but the laugh broke off as her eyes met Kady’s. Kady wanted to kiss her so badly her jaw ached with it, and her face was hot, but she – she couldn’t. Segulah wasn’t there. Segulah – Kissing Julia without her there would be a betrayal. 

Instead, she hugged Julia, folding her into her arms. “Should we explore?” 

“I don’t know: what are you supposed to do when you arrive in another world? Are there precautions? Should we have got shots?” 

“I don’t think there’s a manual.” 

Julia looked out at the water. “What can anyone do to us, anyway?” 

It wasn’t bravery speaking: it was fatalism. Without their daemons, they were half the selves they had been. What was there to lose? 

So they walked in another world: a place with a warm night, firm grey sand, and a softly lapping sea. They joined hands, matching one another’s stride. The beach sloped up to sand dunes, but they decided that, in the dark, it was safer to follow the line of the water. The stars helped them to pick out their way, but there was no moon. 

They both used Fowler’s Incantation to make lights, but it seemed dangerous and difficult to try to illuminate the whole beach, so they used it only to keep themselves from stubbing their toes. They walked for a long time without speaking: the air smelt so sweet Kady felt like she’d never need to rest if she just breathed it in.

As they followed the line of the shore, she began to think Segulah was nearby – a shadow further up the beach, or a silhouette among the dunes. She remembered being a child somewhere on a windswept beach, and Segulah turning into a porpoise and swimming alongside her in the white froth. Though Segulah would never change again, Kady almost believed she was somewhere in the sea, leaping just out of sight. 

Julia paused occasionally, looking up at the stars, before adjusting the straps on her backpack and walking on. 

The sand began to drag under Kady’s feet. She stopped to pull a bottle of water from her backpack. She wondered what water there would be here, and whether it would be safe to drink: but such concerns didn’t seem very important. She didn’t know a spell for purifying water, but she was pretty sure she could improvise one. 

“The ocean hasn’t come in or out,” Julia said. “Why isn’t there a tide?” 

Kady hadn’t thought about it. “Maybe it’s a lake?” 

They stood, listening to the water: a faint, musical whisper. Kady’s ears interpreted a distant rustle as Segulah’s laugh. 

“We must have been here for about three hours now,” Julia said. “It should start getting light soon.” 

Light: what colour would the water be in sunshine? Would there even be a sun here? What kind of people would they meet? It was hard to believe the beach wasn’t somewhere on Earth. 

Kady sat down in the sand, getting a protein bar out of her bag. She split it in half and passed half to Julia. Paused. Listened. That rustle again. 

“Look!” Julia whispered, pointing the beam of her light towards a movement further along the waterline. 

Kady was primed to see a hyena crossing the dark beach, her shadow becoming a solid wall of fur and muscle. Instead, she saw a turtle travelling down the sand, propelled by slow swipes of its flippers. 

“Does that mean it’s an ocean?” Julia asked. “Or are there lake turtles?” 

Kady didn’t really care. “Do you...” She wet her lips. “Do you feel Aster?” 

Julia chewed a mouthful of protein bar. “I keep thinking he’s somewhere...” she gestured towards the sky. “Somewhere there.” 

“I think I hear Segulah.” Kady shut her eyes. “Could they really be here, or are we just hoping?” 

“I didn’t feel him at all, before. I thought I might never see him again.” Julia’s voice was strained. “It felt like he was just... gone. Here I don’t feel so much like I’ll – go crazy if I don’t keep moving.” 

“Me too.” Kady stretched her legs out onto the sand. She leant back on her elbows, tipping her head back. The sky was still dark, though the stars had changed position. Maybe, somewhere close they’d find.... “I don’t feel as anxious. Which makes me worry. Like maybe I’m missing something important.” 

Julia snorted. “Me too. Calm is scary.” 

But they remained still, listening to the water and the soft breeze moving in the grasses. 

“Can I ask you something?” Julia said. 

“No: I never let the people I travel to different worlds with ask me questions. I have boundaries.” 

Julia shoved her playfully: as Kady resisted her, she met Julia’s eyes. She wanted to – to gather Julia’s hair in her hand, and tug her head back so she could kiss her neck and her jaw. She imagined Julia’s soft exhale. 

“What was it like,” Julia said, “Growing up with a female daemon?” 

That old question. Kady drew her knees up to her chest. If Segulah was there, she would have laughed, set her head onto Kady’s knee, and rolled her eyes. It was unusual to have a daemon who was the same sex as yourself: people said it made you unbalanced, volatile; people sighed and clicked their tongues. But Kady was never going to be balanced. She’d been poor, homeless half the time, her mother was a magic junkie, life was – complicated – 

“I love Segulah. I always did. I didn’t think about it until I was older, and then – I couldn’t imagine us being any other way. It didn’t make life any harder than it was already.” 

Julia folded her jacket up, and lay back, resting her head on it. “Magic comes from pain: that’s what everyone says. Is that why they made us separate? Because it hurt so much, and now we’re stronger?” She sighed. “Maybe Quentin was the smart one.” 

Kady settled beside her. Smell of Julia’s jacket: cigarettes, perfume. “The – the split opened us up to magic. You must have felt it.” 

“It hurt so much I couldn’t stand it and then – then I felt power. I felt magic all around me.” Julia’s voice caught on a sob. “But m-maybe it wasn’t because of the splitting, maybe it was just the pain.” 

Kady rolled onto her side, sliding her arm over Julia’s stomach. The sadness on Julia’s face was almost too much for her to take. She rested her head on Julia’s shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look. Her body fit easily around Julia’s and she wanted to draw her close, closer, meld them together. 

“We both wanted to,” Kady said. “Segulah and I. We wanted to be stronger. Does it matter _why_ we’re stronger?” 

“It does,” Julia said. “B-because maybe we could have learned everything we needed to know without hurting ourselves, m-maybe it’s just another way the school tr-tries to torture us....” 

She was really crying now. Kady pressed against her, feeling Julia’s sobs against her own chest. It seemed so little to offer in the wake of misery. 

“What if we don’t find them?” Julia asked. 

“We’ll find them,” Kady said. She kissed Julia’s cheek, stroking her hair back from her face. She’d never seen Julia this vulnerable before, not even when she was throwing up in the sink or too tired to stand up. Kady’s throat burned. 

She hated to see Julia like this: she hated the people who had chipped away at the fiery, arrogant Julia she’d first met. It wasn’t right, how magic, how the world, squashed women, pushing them down and down until they were too exhausted to be angry. She wanted Julia to remain angry and savage.

“We will find them,” Kady said again, holding Julia’s bony frame tight against her chest. 

**

And then, it was dawn. Kady didn’t think she’d fallen asleep, but the pink on the horizon surprised her. Light diffused across the sky, turning it to pale navy, but the sun hadn’t yet risen. God, it was _stupid_ to sleep on an unknown beach for about a hundred different reasons. 

She sat up. A glossy brown rat, crouching on her backpack, eyed her. She knew, as you always knew, that she was a daemon. 

“A-Ardhvika?” Kady asked.

The daemon groomed her long whiskers. “Penny’s on the way,” she said. “I came down here early: I thought I felt someone wandering through our wards.” 

Of course, she would never touch Ardhvika: that was an unspeakable betrayal. But she’d never wanted to touch some else’s daemon so desperately. She wanted to gather the little rat into her arms, to hold a daemon against her heart again. She wanted a small tongue to lick her cheek. Segulah used to turn into a rat often: she enjoyed it. Kady’s mom called her ‘my little trash princess’. She knew how a little rat-daemon would feel in her hands, and she wanted the small, dense weight. 

Fuck. Kady rubbed her face. Tried to force the feeling down. 

“Are you OK?” she asked. “Ardhvika, what happened when we left you?” 

The rat’s nose twitched. “Lots of things,” she said. 

Julia woke with a startled sound, sitting up and drawing her knees to her chest in one quick motion. Kady rubbed her shoulder.

“Oh, my God,” Julia said, and her hand stretched towards Ardhvika. She snatched it back just as quickly. 

The rat put the backpack between herself and the two women. She cleaned her ears. “We’re staying in the camp,” she said. “Penny, and some other Magicians. You can join us there.” 

“It’s nice to see you,” Julia said, trying to smooth down her hair. Her eyes remained on Ardhvika, and Kady could feel her hunger: her longing. Kady had _yearned_ when she’d seen people and their daemons at home, but the sensation was even more acute when she looked at a daemon without her person. 

And – and it meant things might be OK, didn’t it? That they _were_ going to find their daemons? 

Kady tried to get more information from Ardhvika while Julia went among the dunes to pee. Ardhvika was vague, saying she wasn’t sure how long she’d been here with Penny, and unable to number how many other Magicians were there. Despite that, she was friendly, and Kady remembered what she’d forgotten during these last long weeks: that there were more people in the world than Julia, and she actually liked some of them. 

She even ran towards Penny when she saw him: he hugged her, smelling of sweat and sand, familiar and human and warm. His hand pressed against the back of her neck, and she could feel his voice rumble against her breast bone. “Finally. I thought you’d never make it.” 

“Did you know we were coming?” Julia asked, emerging from the grasses. 

Kady saw Penny see Julia: his expression changed into something wistful. Ardhvika ran across the sand towards him, and surged up onto Penny’s shoulder. 

“I hoped you were coming. The decent Magicians wash up here.” The morning breeze blew his hair back from his face: he looked calm and whole, as though he had no jagged edges at all. Kady knew that wasn’t true, but when she saw Ardhvika stretch to smooth his hair, she felt only jealousy. 

“I want to hear all about it,” Julia said, brushing her hand against Penny’s. “You look good.” 

Penny’s mouth twitched. “Are you hungry?” 

**

Kady wasn’t jealous of Penny. She knew he had a crush on Julia: she was pretty sure it was hopeless for both of them, so it didn’t matter that they both felt it. At least Julia had slept with _her_. But acid surged in her stomach she’d never noticed before when Julia squeezed Penny’s hand, or smiled at him, or leaned in close to hear what he was saying. 

“Other humans live in this world,” Penny said. “Some of them have daemons, some of them don’t. When you follow a path from another world to this place, you pretty much always end up on this island, and they don’t care if we hang out here. We barter with them: spells for supplies.” 

There was a little camp set up not far from the beach: a semi-permanent collection of huts and fire-pits. Julia grilled Penny on the geography and ecology of the world, most of which made him shrug or laugh. 

“Calm down, nerd,” he said at last. “Have you tried doing magic here?”

“Just Fowler’s, so we could see our way last night,” Julia said. 

“Oh, man. Do something interesting. Anything. Fly. Make an illusion.” 

Julia was always willing to do magic. She ignored the cooking smells coming from a low fire they passed, and the display of fruit in front of another hut, in favour of kneeling on the sand and drawing a sigil around herself. Kady was starving, her mouth watering at the smell of smoke, but, as usual, she followed where Julia led. 

Her mouth set with concentration. She looked impossibly _Julia_ : small, intent, determined. Kady glanced at Penny, and he nudged her. “You’re next.” 

Julia’s hands moved in an unfamiliar series of tuts. Where had she learnt that? Kady watched as gold shapes formed from her fingertips, and spread into an illusion of an old-growth forest, tall trunks and long shadows, a canopy of leaves. Julia made a small sound – of wonder, or of joy. The illusion rippled, and filled itself in – birds flew in the trees. The bark became solid, snarled and time-scarred; there was a sound of wind in leaves. Golden wolf eyes stared from the deepest shadow – 

“Stop, stop.” Penny was laughing, but he took Julia’s hands in his, whispering the enchantment to cancel a spell. “I forget how strong you are. We don’t need a fucking oak wood here.” 

“The magic loves us,” Julia said, voice dreamy. “It _loves_ us.” 

“You get a little stoned at first.” Penny helped her back onto her feet. “You try, Kady.” 

“Was she –” Kady swallowed. “That stopped being an illusion. Didn’t it? Holy shit.” 

Illusions were difficult enough: they took concentration and strength. But _actually making a forest grow:_ that was – huge. 

“Yeah. Maybe be less ambitious,” Penny said. “Don’t accidentally turn yourself into a demi-god.” 

Kady snorted. “I’d only do that on purpose.” She’d been able to fly since she was sixteen. She’d been doing battle magic since she was eighteen. She knew her strengths and her limits, she – 

She lifted her hands, listening, really listening, to the world around her. Once she allowed herself to let it in, she understood why Julia was enthralled: the magic infused everything, every blade of grass, grain of sand, and it – the magical current, it _loved_ them. It wanted to be used. It wanted to be understood. It was as though this world saw them, and – and it was a puppy, begging to be played with. She spun her hands, and she didn’t need to complete the tut before the magic – knew. Her feet skimmed over the sand, and up – 

She flew like a red-tailed hawk. Like a condor, soaring. She could feel the thermal under her feet. And the magic, threading through the thermal. The cold wind skimmed over her face. She tasted the air all around her, and there was that ozone-tang again. She could do _anything_. She could feel other worlds, threads beyond counting, all around her. She’d never – never felt this before. This was – 

This was what losing Segulah had given her. 

“It’s a playground for Magicians,” Penny said later as they ate falafel and yoghurt sauce. 

“How did you find it?” Julia asked. 

“Like you, I was blundering around, looking for Ardhvika. Feeling pretty – crazy and lost. But when you’re a traveller you can kind of – feel the worlds. I – I realised I’d always felt them a little bit, but after the Antarctic it was – different. I could see them. And – this one kind of glows. It’s...” He shrugged, spreading his fingers. “Anyway, Ardhvika obviously loves me more than your daemons do, because she found me.” 

Ardhvika squeaked: from a larger animal, it might have been a derisive snort. “ _That’s_ not why. It’s because I couldn’t trust you on your own.” 

“Is that right?” Penny rubbed his thumb over the top of her head. “I think you were lonely.”

She bit him, small yellow teeth gripping his finger, black eyes glaring. Penny choked. “OK, I’m sorry. We’re not ready to joke about it.” 

She let him go, but climbed off his hand and scuttled away, vanishing among the huts. Penny’s thumb wasn’t bleeding, but Kady could see the indentations Ardhvika’s teeth had left on his skin. 

Julia raised her eyebrows. “So this isn’t paradise.” 

“No.” Penny drank coffee from a thermos, and offered it around. Kady sipped from it. “I met Gretchen here too, but she didn’t want to stay, and a couple of other people from Brakebills. Some people had met their daemons, but –” He lowered his voice, sighing. “But we’re all pretty fucked up. Ardhvika hasn’t forgiven me. It’s worse for them – our daemons. We – we agreed we’d do it, but... I don’t think she could really believe I kept walking.” 

Kady could see the pain in his face now. He’d lost the contented glow he’d had on the beach. They were all fucked up. 

Julia looked bleak. She put the falafel down. “Aster’s always held a grudge. God. I miss him.” 

“I keep feeling like Segulah’s here,” Kady said. “Last night I was sure I heard her.” 

“You probably did. You felt better, when you got here, right?” Penny rubbed his hands against his knees. “It’s not just Magicians who are attracted to the magic in this world – it’s our daemons, too. And they’re – they’re more in tune with magic, now, Ardhvika says. She says she can taste it.” 

“You mean Segulah really might be here?” Kady asked. 

“Yeah. That’s why you feel better. Because she’s close.” 

Kady looked around, wildly, as though she might see the lean shape of hyena pacing towards her through the camp. 

Penny knocked his shoulder against hers. “You won’t find her until she wants you to.” 

**

In the evening, they got high on a herbalist’s enhanced weed. He was older than they were, and said he was on a spiritual quest: his daemon was a golden eagle, and they both kind of seemed like assholes. The weed made Kady feel tired and spacey, and Julia took one hit, narrowed her eyes, and wandered off into the dunes. 

Kady didn’t want to follow her. She didn’t want to be clingy. They’d barely been out of each other’s sight for weeks. Julia was entitled to alone time on Magic Island.

Except – 

Kady left Penny and Ardhvika to continue flirting with a hot, angry-looking woman with a facial tattoo but no daemon, and followed Julia’s footprints. The middle of the day had been too hot for comfort, and she’d lain in one of the huts, unable to sleep and unable to do anything else, but the evening was cool, the sky darkening to navy, and she felt – not exactly better, but a little less like she wanted to rip her skin off. 

Julia had settled in a large hollow where grasses and sand met, and was sitting cross-legged, fingers moving, not in a tut, but in a careful, considered way, as though she was paging through an invisible book. 

“I can feel them – can’t you?” she said. 

Kady sat next to her: the sand was cool without being wet, and she could hear the whispering of the lake. She knew what Julia meant without asking her. “Other worlds.” 

“Penny said it, and it – clicked,” Julia said. “We’ve been stupid, we should have noticed sooner. I know I can – I can find my way in, if I just – if I just find the right way to ask.” 

Kady brushed her hair back. Strands tangled around her fingers: it felt a little gritty. “We don’t have to be careful, honestly. What does it matter? But... We should probably figure out what we want before we open a door.”

“That is being careful.” When Julia looked up at her, her eyes were wide and spacey, like she was high. But it wasn’t the weed, it was the magic. 

“When I’m here, I...” Kady swallowed. “I feel like I can’t think clearly, and also like I’m thinking clearly for the first time in my life.” 

“Me too.” Julia rubbed her arms, flexing her wrists and fingers. She moved closer to Kady in their little hollow, fitting her body against Kady’s side. She – how did she smell so fucking good when they were sandy and sweaty? Kady wanted to bury her face in Julia’s neck; she wanted to touch her, each piece of her: cold hand and narrow throat, the cup of her hips, the downy hair on her ankles. Fuck. 

“And what have you figured out?” Kady asked. 

“Nothing – that’s the problem. I – miss Aster, and there’s all this magic, there’s so much beauty and potential, and I don’t know what to _do_. I was always – looking for something. Something special, something _more_ – and now it’s here and I don’t know – what _the fuck_ to do, Kady.” 

Her voice was raw. God, an existential crisis. Kady was exhausted, all the way through. She wanted to lie in a hut and get high. And – she knew exactly what Julia meant. She wanted to fly. She wanted to open doors to other worlds. And she – didn’t fucking know. 

“This is probably why people go back to Brakebills,” she said. “Because they’re too stupid to figure out what else to do.” 

Julia laughed, and then sobbed. She rubbed her hands across her eyes. Kady reached for her, unable to hold herself back. She cupped Julia’s jaw, looking into her lovely face. Her lovely, annoying face. 

Julia’s breath caught. She held Kady’s eyes. “I want to kiss you. But not without Aster.” 

Kady hadn’t thought her heart would ever pound like this again: with joy, with wanting. “I know.” She was thinking of Segulah, all the time of Segulah: how she’d never touched anyone without Segulah there to lie with their daemon, without Segulah to echo back her feelings to her. 

Kady bit her lip. “But... We have to look at things differently now, don’t we? Maybe this is exactly what we should do.” 

“You’re just saying that because you’re horny.” 

“Yeah. But also because I really like you.” Kady’s hand cupped Julia’s cheek. Her fingers tangled in Julia’s ragged hair. “I feel so broken. But – I like you, I want you, that’s... that’s the only thing that hasn’t changed.” 

Julia leant her forehead against Kady’s. “You’ve kept me – sane, Kady. You’re the one I – You’re the person I want. When I’m crazy and when I’m – I’m whole. B-but I’m not – I’m not _good._ That first time, when we fucked, I – I mean, I _liked_ you, but I did because I thought you’d know a lot about magic, and I wanted you to like me so you’d – so you’d tell me about it.” 

Kady laughed. She knew that. She’d always known. “Hey, guess what. It worked.” 

She kissed Julia: mouth open, breath mingling. Julia clung to her, fisting her hands in Kady’s shirt, legs wrapping around Kady’s waist. A hot, dense weight on Kady’s lap, fingers digging into Kady’s back, into her hair, and – kissing her, kissing her. Kady drank her in: mouthful after mouthful of Julia, like she’d almost drowned and Julia was oxygen. 

“Fuck.” Julia leant her forehead against Kady’s. Her face was wet – tears, sweat. “Aster. Aster, I need you.” 

Kady shut her eyes. She felt as though she might cry too; as though she was a hollow cavern of misery. But that – that didn’t stop her from wanting Julia. She was horrified by how much she needed her, by the raw want that was only assuaged by holding her. “I know,” she whispered. “Julia, I... I wish he was here.” 

Breath catching in their throats, they sat like that for a moment: tangled together, under unfamiliar stars. 

Then Julia’s fingers tightened their grip in Kady’s hair, and she sucked Kady’s lower lip. Kady pushed her down, onto her back, and Julia’s legs wrapped around her waist, tugging Kady on top of her. She gripped Kady’s wrists, one in each hand, strong fingers circling them: Kady could have pulled free, but she liked that Julia was holding her here, that Julia needed her to be close. 

She sucked bruises on to Julia’s white throat, onto her shoulders, and then they had to untangle themselves to pull off clothes and – fuck, they shouldn’t do this in the sand, that was a terrible idea, but there was sand everywhere, everywhere, so what did it matter where they were, it wasn’t like she was going to stop – 

– and she was kissing Julia’s breasts, tonguing the areoles, and Julia was whimpering, knees digging into Kady’s sides, hands scratching down Kady’s back, gripping Kady’s ass, her thighs. Kady’s heart was thunder in her chest, and she – she wanted this to be slow, she wanted to take Julia apart, return to her every moment of thwarted lust she’d given Kady, until she was whimpering and useless, but –

– she was already whimpering and desperate, wasn’t she? And Kady – Kady was the one who was crying now, tears sliding down her cheeks even as she pressed desperate kisses to Julia’s chest, her chin, the curves of her shoulders. She kissed Julia’s ribcage, and Julia made a hoarse sound, a laugh –

“Don’t tickle me,” she said. 

“It’s because you’re so goddamn thin,” Kady said, running her fingers down rib bones, and watching Julia’s face: sucking her lip, trying not to make a sound. “Stop pushing your food away.” 

“Stop talking.” Julia’s hand tightened in Kady’s hair – she must know the hair-pulling made Kady’s breath hitch, made her hot all over... 

She’d – she’d meant to fuck Julia first, to lick one orgasm out of her and then use her fingers until – 

But Julia’s hands were gripping Kady’s hips, and her fingers pushed between them and, fuck – Kady was so goddamn wet, Julia’s fingers were sliding inside her like there were no barriers between them, no spaces, and Kady was clenching around them, needing Julia inside her, right into the very heat of her – 

“Oh my God,” Julia hissed. “Oh my God, you feel – You are –” She broke off, burying her face in Kady’s shoulder, and her teeth nipped hard into Kady’s skin, a sharp, sudden pain, and it broke over Kady’s body in a wave, the white heat of it, Julia’s fingers fucking in and out of her, and for a moment she felt – she felt that there was someplace deep inside of her where she was still completely whole. 

**

She dreamt about Segulah: the colours of her coat: the richness of the browns and tawnys, the thick, softness of it under her fingers. The way she moved, quick and predatory, and how Kady would jog through dark streets and lonely parks and know Segulah was always one pace behind her, her toothed shadow. She dreamt she was a child, alone, pushing furniture against the apartment door because she didn’t believe it would be a real barrier to the thundering feet and shouting and sirens outside. Segulah picked up the small, frightened Kady by the back of her neck, in jaws huge and gentle, and carried her – carried her somewhere safe and soft, and let Kady sleep against the warm hill of her spine. 

When she woke, Julia was tucked all around her body, one of Kady’s legs sandwiched between her thighs, her arms locked around Kady’s torso, her face pressed into her neck. They’d made it back to the hut in the early hours of the morning, and slept. Now the sun reached the bottom of their bedroll. Kady could taste magic on the air. 

Julia was awake too. “This better not be a one-time thing,” she said, meeting Kady’s eyes with a fierce, predatory stare. “It’s not casual.” 

She looked like she’d been awake for hours, and was ready to start a fight. 

“Sweetheart,” Kady said, surprising herself with the term of endearment. “I know.” 

Julia kissed her with that desperate, anxious tug, pulling Kady’s breath into her mouth, her lip between her teeth. They rocked against one another, naked thighs pressed against vulvas, breath hard and sharp and quick, and Julia whispered into Kady’s ear, an incoherent mixture of affection and need. Kady raked her fingers down Julia’s spine, and Julia came against her leg and kept rocking, kept kissing, always, always seeking more... 

**

When Kady left the hut at last, it was only to find food and water. She was shaky, head sore, mouth dry. Penny joined her as she filled a plate with fruit and nuts. Ardhvika wasn’t with him. 

Kady wondered if she should feel bad or embarrassed about the previous night. She couldn’t access those emotions though. She was blearily content. 

“So.” Penny waved a hand over the coffee pot, reheating it for her. 

“Yeah.” Kady brushed the hair out of her eyes. It was clumpy: they should really wash in the lake today. She’d seen other people go down to the water to swim but she hadn’t tried it yet. She imagined cool water on her sore limbs, the sting against the bruises on her breasts and neck. It was tempting. 

“You should go for a walk towards the centre of the island. As soon as you’ve eaten.” 

The last thing she wanted to do was trek into the shrubs and trees on the other side of the camp. She just wanted to eat grapes and fuck Julia and sleep. They hadn’t even used magic on one another yet – God. Here, it would be so intense. 

“Uh. I don’t really feel like a hike.” 

Penny put his hand on her shoulder. Squeezed. His face wrinkled slightly: she wondered if he could smell sex on her skin. “You’ve got sand in your hair,” he said. “Trust me: you should go. You and Julia. You won’t have to go far.” 

And she did: trust him. So she nodded, and, with an easy flick of her hand, cast a hovering spell on the plates of food. They followed her back to her hut like she was in a Disney movie. 

She gave Julia bread studded with nuts, a round of sheep’s cheese, and olives, honey and fresh fruit. The fruits were the only food unfamiliar to her, and she could still recognise some of them: figs, pomegranate. She was ravenous, and she wanted Julia to eat before she told her Penny’s advice. 

When they were finally full, she explained, and Julia’s eyes lit up. 

“Maybe he’s seen Aster.” 

“He’d have told us.” 

Julia was already pulling on her sandy pants and her torn shirt. “He doesn’t want to get our hopes up.” 

“Well, that backfired.” Kady’s stomach turned over. Perhaps all the fruit had been a mistake. 

The ground sloped quickly upward once they began walking away from the camp. The trees grew around exposed moraines of rock that were tricky to cross. Birdsong echoed loud and unfamiliar. Julia spotted a monkey, or something like a monkey. It was cooler in the shadows, the ground dry and springy underfoot. Kady had felt heavy-limbed and stupid, but breathing the bright taste of magic in the air revived her. 

A high, thin screech: Julia listened intently, lips parted. 

Again. 

It was the call of a peregrine falcon. Kady knew it instantly. 

“It has to be!” Julia spun wildly, and set off into the underbrush. 

They had been following an uncertain and overgrown path, but the direction Julia chose was much harder going: she staggered through thorny vines and over loose rocks. Her arms were scratched instantly, but she didn’t seem to notice. 

Kady followed: her heart pounding in her throat, she felt a desperate urgency to move, to seek, to _find_ – They staggered forward, pausing from time to time, trying to hear the call. There were so many other noises: crunching of leaves, song of birds, sound of breath. 

Kady’s ears strained for the howl or laugh of a hyena. Nothing. 

They staggered on. Julia was panting, half-sobbing, and she tripped over another shrub, and fell hard onto one of the half-hidden rocks. When she stood up, her pants were torn, and both her knees were bleeding. A mixture of dirt and blood clung to her hands. 

“Fuck,” Kady said, stopping too. She reached for Julia’s hand. 

“Don’t touch me!” Julia snapped, and then hit herself in the forehead with her fist. “I don’t know what to do.” 

“We went in the wrong direction...” Kady began, trying to calm her. 

“There’s no right direction! There’ll... There’ll never be a right way again!” 

Suddenly: a flutter of wings. 

Aster landed on the tree above them. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. “I hate it when you do that.” 

Julia didn’t speak. Her mouth opened and closed. Her eyes huge, beseeching.

“Aster,” Kady said. 

He looked between them, tilting his head. The fierce glare of a predator. Then his wings opened and he flew down to Julia. He settled against her breast. Her hands rose automatically to support him. He spread his wings out, as though trying to mantle around both of them. 

Julia rocked back and forth on her heels, choking, sobbing. They looked complete, whole: as though they’d never been apart. Kady stared at them, frantic with longing. 

“They’re very dramatic,” Segulah said. She appeared from between the trees, her big paws making no sound on the dry leaves. 

Her voice was cool, sardonic, familiar. Kady wanted to – wanted to nod, like things were normal. To laugh with her. 

Instead, she flung her arms around Segulah. They rolled into one another, falling into the bushes, Segulah on top of Kady. The huge predator lay on her, her weight pressing Kady into the earth. Her jaws, above Kady’s face, opened, revealing tongue and teeth. Then, like a dog, she licked Kady’s cheek. Kady laughed with joy, wrapping her arms around Segulah’s thick neck, hiding her face in the fur. 

She wanted to speak, but, like Julia, she didn’t have any words. Just the weight of Segulah against her, and the forest all around. It was as though all the good things in the world suddenly rushed back into her all at once.

Nearby, she could hear Julia’s sobs turn into laughter. 

**

At dusk, they returned to the lake. Kady walked into the water, still wearing her clothes, and Segulah splashed in after her. Sand rose from her t-shirt and pants, and Kady pulled them off, flinging them onto a rock. She’d have to wash them. She wouldn’t want to wear them now that she was clean. 

Maybe she’d just stop wearing clothes. 

Julia stood on the shore, stroking Aster’s breast. He made a noise – frustration, perhaps – and sprang off her shoulder, soaring into the sky. Julia watched him for a moment, lips parting. He could fly further from her than ever before, like a real falcon. It didn’t hurt either of them, but it was strange to know that space was possible. 

Kady watched as Julia stripped off, and she swam to meet her. Julia, naked, felt delicious in her arms. Small, strong, slippery. She kissed Kady, opened-mouthed, and then leant back, smiling, looking past her, at the sky. 

“He says I’m being clingy,” Julia said. 

“You are being clingy,” Segulah replied. She’d made her way to a rock that rose just above the surface of the lake, and was spread out on it, the last lemon light of the day slanting on her belly. “Things are going to be different now.” 

“I know.” Julia chewed her lip. “I... I feel so guilty.” 

“That doesn’t make any difference,” Segulah said. She yawned. “I’m glad you worked things out. I thought you never would, not without our help.” 

“I thought you might be pissed off that we did it without you,” Kady said. 

Segulah’s ears flicked. “You did a lot of things without us. And we did a lot of things without you.” 

“What things?” Julia had been asking some version of this question since they’d met in the forest. 

Now, Segulah sat up, looking over the water. Aster came winging down, and landed beside her on the rock. He nestled against Segulah’s leg. “Don’t get me wet,” he said to Julia. 

Instead of reaching for him, she squeezed Kady’s hand. 

“The water feels good,” Kady said. “You should wash, Jules. We’re both gross.” 

Julia raised her eyebrows, and splashed a small wave at Kady. 

A thin line of red light remained above the edge of the lake. The stars were coming out in the navy-black sky. The water held the warmth of the day, and lapped around them, caressing sore feet and bruised limbs. 

Julia spread out on her back, floating on the water’s surface. Washing could wait. Kady swam out towards the sunset, towards the darkening sky. She couldn’t tell where the world ended and she began.


End file.
